$100,000 COULD GET 21ST CENTURY ROLLING.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

You look around the classroom at all the young, innocent faces, and wonder how many of these kids have already made up their minds. How many of them will drop out of school and ultimately wind up in low-paying, dead-end jobs as adults?

Which ones will be collecting welfare in 10 years or working for minimum wage? Which ones will go on to college and get a shot at competing for higher-paying jobs in the next century?

It all gets decided right here and now, Ron Plank says. By the fifth grade, most teachers think - sixth grade at the latest. You can see it in their eyes.

If the kids are not being challenged or having fun, if this new knowledge coming at them is not lighting a fire under them like a new video game, exciting them to want to learn more, you're losing them.

And that means society - you and I - are losing them. By the thousands and tens of thousands every year.

Kids who drop off the educational charts in this country before they've even begun to shave or bought their first pair of high heels. Before their voices have even changed.

Kids who the odds say will wind up a drag on society as adults, not an asset, because they never learned the skills they'll need to compete in the next century.

That's why the $100,000 is so important, Plank knows. Why the frustration of being so close to raising the funds, that may well turn on the technological light bulb over the heads of thousands of school kids in this district, keeps up this English teacher turned high-tech junkie most nights, trying to figure out ways to reach us, warn us.

We can either pay a little now to help give these kids the skills they'll need to succeed, or pay a heck of a lot more later trying to pick them up when they fail, he says.

It's not a threat lingering out there on the horizon like the bankruptcy of Social Security or the burgeoning costs of Medicare. It's here, and it's now.

In the next few weeks to a month, the district's first Manufacturing Technologies Laboratory trailer is scheduled to pull into the parking lot of Maclay Middle School in Pacoima.

It's a fancy name for a rolling shop class - a trailer with two milling machines, a lathe, two robotic arms, and a drill press - all run by computers, which the students are taught to operate. The manufacturing, high-tech future.

Soup to nuts, it'll cost $300,000 to buy and operate, and it will be available to the students in 21 schools in the northeast section of the Valley - one high school, four middle schools and 14 elementary schools.

But so far, only $200,000 of the trailer's costs have been underwritten, mainly by the school district and local business leaders in the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.

Maybe more than any sector, it is the business community which readily sees the need and value for this expensive piece of technological teaching equipment schools can no longer afford to provide.

Even now, it is getting tougher every year to find skilled workers to operate computers and high-tech equipment, and it's only going to get worse unless we shake up the next generation and give them the tools to learn, says Walt Mosher, president of Precision Dynamics Corp. and chairman of the VICA Education Foundation.

``We have to start now, at the beginning of the educational process, to teach these kids the technology of the 21st century,'' he said. ``Only then will we have the skilled labor force we're going to need in the coming years.''

That's why the wall they've hit in trying to raise this last $100,000 to get the trailer delivered and running has been so frustrating. No one involved in the project has the least doubt that the success of this first rolling shop class will lead to another, then another trailer for every cluster district of schools in the Valley. Different trailers would focus on communications, biotechnology and other areas where the good jobs will be in the 21st century.

The Los Angeles Unified School District may no longer be able to afford to offer high-tech shop classes at all of its schools, so it's up to businesses and individuals to chip in to bring the rolling shop classes to each school and student.

``It's the only chance for our kids to get hands-on experience for all the concepts we throw at them in the classroom, to make it all come alive and be fun to learn,'' said Plank, who describes his role as an ambassador to the teachers and students unsure of technology.

``I hold their hands and help them take the 21st century into the classroom,'' he says.

And now, Plank and VICA are asking us all to join them in taking our kids into the shop class of the 21st century.

All of us - corporations, businesses, mom and pop stores, and individuals - joining together to chip in whatever we can afford to help these kids make up their minds - to stay in school, to learn, to succeed.

It all gets decided right here, right now.

For more information on the Manufacturing Technologies Laboratory and becoming involved in making it happen, call Kelleher & Associates at [phone].

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Photo: Seventh-grader Sasha Santacruz works away at Maclay Middle School in Pacoima. Ron Plank believes pupils decide by fifth or sixth grade whether to pursue higher education.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News